Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96

DOI 10.1007/s11192-014-1286-7

The dynamics of interdisciplinary research fields:

the case of river research

Pim Vugteveen • Rob Lenders • Peter Van den Besselaar

Received: 4 July 2013 / Published online: 1 April 2014

 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2014

Abstract Interdisciplinarity results from dynamics at two levels. Firstly, research ques-
tions are approached using inputs from a variety of disciplinary fields. Secondly, the results
of this multidisciplinary research feed back into the various research fields. This may either
contribute to the further development of these fields, or may lead to disciplinary recon-
figuration. If the latter is the case, a new interdisciplinary field may emerge. Following this
perspective, the scientific landscape of river research and river science is mapped to assess
to which current river research is a multi-disciplinary endeavor, and to which extent it
results in a new emerging (inter)disciplinary field of river science. The paper suggests that
this two level approach is a useful method to study interdisciplinary research and, more
generally, disciplinary dynamics. With respect to river research, we show that it is mainly
performed in several fields (limnology, fisheries & fish research, hydrology & water
resources, and geomorphology) that hardly exchange knowledge. The different river
research topics are multidisciplinary in nature, as they are shared by different fields.
However, river science does not emerge as an interdisciplinary field, and often-mentioned
new interdisciplinary fields such as hydroecology or hydromorphology are not (yet) visible.
There is hardly any involvement of social within river research. Finally, the field of
ecology occupies a central position within river research, whereas an expected engineering
field is shown absent. This together may signal the acceptance of the ecosystem-based
paradigm in river management, replacing the traditional engineering paradigm.

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11192-014-1286-7)

contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

P. Vugteveen
R. Lenders
Department of Environmental Science, Radboud University, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ Nijmegen,
The Netherlands

P. Van den Besselaar (&)

Department of Organization Sciences & Network Institute, VU University Amsterdam,
Buitenveldertselaan 3, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: p.a.a.vanden.besselaar@vu.nl

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Keywords Cognitive change
Knowledge dynamics
Interdisciplinarity

Multidisciplinarity
River science

Introduction

Recognition of system complexities and societal demands have challenged the science
system to move away from traditional discipline-driven research towards a socially rele-
vant and problem-driven mode of research that connects research activity across scholarly
and societal boundaries (e.g. Kates et al. 2001; Gallopin et al. 2001). Understanding
complex societal problems does challenge vertical boundaries between experts, policy-
makers, practitioners, and the public, and horizontal boundaries between disciplines (Van
Kerkhoff 2005; Klein 2004; Nowotny et al. 2003), and asks for cross-disciplinary research
(CDR). For example, environmental issues typically are complex problems due to the
interplay of phenomena at different temporal and spatial scales in social, economic and
ecological dimensions. However, social and policy relevant research approaches do not
emerge easily from existing disciplinary research. Despite its encouragement by research
funders and science policy makers, the nature, status, and prestige of CDR remain unclear
(Buter et al. 2011).
In this study, we test a novel approach to CDR (Van den Besselaar forthcoming) by
applying it to river research, a heterogeneous and societal relevant research domain. Doing
so, we contribute to (a) better understanding of concepts of cross-disciplinarity, (b) better
understanding of the dynamics of disciplinary change, and (c) the understanding of
research domains that focus on results relevant for societal challenges—such as river
science.

Approaches to cross-disciplinary research

Cross-disciplinary research is attracting a lot of attention, as it is expected to produce more

often societal relevant and scholarly innovative outcomes. Despite this, the meaning of the
concept (and related concepts), and the indicators for identifying it, are still disputed. At
the same time, in order to understand the claims about cross-disciplinarity, we need to
understand its nature.
The terminology is still not stabilized, and concepts like multidisciplinary, interdisci-
plinary, and transdisciplinary are used in different ways by different authors. Furthermore,
the terms multi/inter/trans/disciplinary are used in many different contexts, and seem to refer
to many things, such as researchers, research groups or departments, individual papers and
sets of papers, individual journals and sets of journals, research topics and scientific fields.
So, one may talk about an interdisciplinary department, defined in terms of the disciplinary
background of the members of the department, or in terms of the fields covered by the
research of the department. And one may then ask whether the degree of interdisciplinarity of
the department correlates with e.g., scholarly performance, or with interdisciplinary output,
or with societal relevance of the research done by the group. Here we approach cross-
disciplinarity from the perspective of the development of research fields.
We use cross-disciplinary as the generic term, and the other three in more specific ways,
as will be argued in the paper (Van den Besselaar & Heimeriks 2001; Merkx and Van den
Besselaar 2008; Tress et al. 2005).

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Quite some work has been done over the years to develop concepts and indicators for
cross-disciplinarity. Basically, two approaches can be distinguished. Many authors have
defined cross-disciplinarity of a research field in terms of the share of references to other
fields, i.e. in terms of the size of knowledge flows (Van Raan and van Leeuwen 2002; Rinia
et al. 2002). In this approach, the topology of the fields is generally based on top-down
defined (Web of Science) subject categories, but sometimes bottom-up generated using
some kind of similarity measure for papers or journals. In the latter case, only a part of the
scientific landscape is generated, and therefore only a part of the knowledge flows can be
taken into account. This approach focuses on the input for research, and on the integration
of heterogeneous sources into CDR output (Porter et al. 2006).
Others have defined cross disciplinarity as the change of the disciplinary landscape (Van
den Besselaar and Heimeriks 2001). This approach is based on mapping the disciplinary
landscape bottom up, based on journal similarity measures (Van den Besselaar and Ley-
desdorff 1996). By comparing the disciplinary landscape between years, changes in
research fields (growth, decline, merging, splitting, emerging, disappearing) become vis-
ible. The emergence of new fields can be read as an second order effect of CDR. The focus
is on what could be called the these second order effects of CDR on the knowledge
landscape through the development of new interdisciplinary fields.
We do not intend to discuss the whole CDR literature here (for reviews see e.g., Morillo
et al. 2003; Bordons et al. 2004; Zitt 2005; Wagner et al. 2011), but contrast our approach
with the recent work of Rafols and colleagues, which plays a central role in the current
debate about CDR. They extended and generalized the first approach (e.g., Rafols et al.
2012; Liu et al. 2012), and focus on interdisciplinarity as knowledge integration (Porter
et al. 2006). Their aim is to develop set of generic measures for interdisciplinarity, which
has been applied on, for example, individual papers or sets of papers (Rafols and Meyer
2010) and on research groups (Rafols et al. 2012). The approach deploys two (composite)
indicators for the level of knowledge integration: diversity of knowledge inputs (which
consists of variety, balance and disparity of the knowledge inputs) and coherence of
knowledge inputs. A third indicator, betweenness centrality (now called intermediation), is
used for measuring research that does not fit within existing fields—and therefore seems to
adopt the topological approach. Although this work offers an interesting perspective on
cross-disciplinarity, the approach has the following drawbacks:
(i) The diversity and coherence indicators depend on boundaries between fields, and for
this one generally deploys the top-down fixed (WoS subject) categories. This implies
that the dynamics of the disciplinary landscape is not taken into account, when
calculating diversity and coherence. However, what is observed as variety, balance,
disparity and coherence of, or intermediation between knowledge sources in terms of
a fixed categorization of disciplines, may disappear if measured against a new and
updated classification. In other words, for an adequate identification of CDR, it is
necessary to have a full bottom-up (and therefore dynamic) definition of disciplinary
stability and change.
(ii) The focus is on integration of knowledge sources used in CDR, so on inputs.
However, disciplinary change as a possible effect of CDR activities is not taken into
account. The results of CDR may get integrated in one of the disciplinary fields it is
based on, or it may contribute to the development of emerging cross-disciplinary
fields. So understanding of cross-disciplinarity not only needs to take into account the
inputs, but also the uptake of the outputs at its effects.

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(iii)The indicators for variety, balance, disparity and coherence measure the degree of
cross-disciplinarity, but it is not so clear what that means—especially as the
indicators should be updated in terms of disciplinary change.
(iv) Last but not least, the adoption of betweenness centrality (Leydesdorff 2007), or
intermediation (Rafols et al. 2012) confuses the topological perspective with the
relational. As well known, betweenness centrality measures ‘‘the extent to which a
vertex lies on the path between other vertices’’ (e.g., Newman 2010, p185), which is
not a topological characteristic. However, Leydesdorff calculates betweenness
centrality through (i) setting a threshold, (ii) removing all similarities below the
threshold, and (iii) calculating betweenness centrality for non-valued graphs on the
resulting ‘truncated’ valued graph. This results in a kind of similarity measure—for
which better alternatives are available (Van den Besselaar and Leydesdorff 1996,
2001). By using relational terminology for the position of the (cross-disciplinary)
journal(s) between established fields, one suggests that the (cross-disciplinary)
journal(s) function as broker (controlling the information exchange between the two
fields) or as mediator (bringing the two fields together). And this is in fact generally
not the case.1

Based on these considerations, we take a different approach. Cross-disciplinarity is here

considered as disciplinary change, resulting from the interaction between two levels: the
level of research where new knowledge is produced, and the level of knowledge com-
munication where new knowledge claims are accepted and integrated into (sometimes
changing) disciplinary frameworks (Van den Besselaar forthcoming).
At the level of disciplines, theoretical and methodological frameworks (‘‘paradigms’’)
are developing gradually, and sometimes radically, influenced by the outcomes of research.
At the same time, these paradigms provide the researcher with a framework that structures
the research activities. Normal science is the further development of the discipline through
disciplinary research. However, researchers also explore new ways of answering ques-
tions—often drawing from methods and ideas from other disciplines. Research questions
are then approached in a multidisciplinary way using a diversity of inputs from a variety of
disciplinary fields. The result of this multidisciplinary research feeds back into various
research fields: through publications that are being cited (Fujigaki 2000). This may either
contribute to the further development of the disciplinary fields the research is based on, or
may lead to new developments outside those existing fields. Multidisciplinary research
may sometimes generate a new-weak but identifiable–communication network. This takes
the form of an initially small and not yet very coherent communication network consisting
of a few journals for the new research. These journals are positioned between the disci-
plinary fields the new development is emerging from. In an earlier study we defined this as
early stage interdisciplinarity, which may develop into more mature stages (e.g., artificial
intelligence, neural networks, robotics)—or may disappear again (e.g., cognitive science).
We showed that the structure of the communication network of mature interdisciplinary
fields becomes identical to those of the traditional disciplines (Van den Besselaar and

1
An instructive example of the resulting confusion is a study by Goldstone & Leydesdorff (2006) of
cognitive science. Using betweenness centrality to measure the position of the journal Cognitive Science
between computer science and cognitive psychology makes them conclude that the Cognitive Science
functions as a broker between the two research fields, and that the knowledge flows between the two fields
go through the journal Cognitive Science. However, the large majority of citations between the two fields are
direct citations between journals in the two fields.

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Heimeriks 2001). In other words, interdisciplinarity is a temporary stage of disciplinary

reconfiguration, as the further a new interdisciplinary field develops, the more disciplinary
it becomes. Of course, these changes can only be observed if one avoids working with pre-
defined fields. Definitions of research fronts and of fields and disciplines have to be
dynamically based on similarities between journals and between papers.
In previous studies we focused on the development of the disciplinary landscape, op-
erationalized as changing sets of journals2 with the same position in the global journal
citation network (Van den Besselaar and Leydesdorff 1996; Van den Besselaar and Hei-
meriks 2001). Here we combine this approach with an analysis of the development of CDR
at the research front level, operationalized as communities of similar papers (Van den
Besselaar and Heimeriks 2006). A comparison of the paper network and the journal net-
work will lead to an understanding of cross-disciplinarity as a two-level process of change.

The case: river research

There is widespread recognition amongst scholars in environmental science that cross-

disciplinary efforts are necessary to increase our understanding of complex environmental
issues (Brierley and Fryirs 2008; Thorp et al. 2007; Wear 1999; Naiman 1999; Benda et al.
2002; Palmer and Bernhardt 2006; McCulloch 2007). Especially in the research and
management of water systems, the bridging of disciplinary perspectives figures promi-
nently on the agenda’s, as evidenced by the promotion of fields like hydroecology, eco-
hydrology, eco-hydromorphology and eco-geomorphology. It has been suggested that
these fields extend beyond ecology, geomorphology and hydrology into other contributing
fields such as civil engineering, economics and social sciences (Vaughan et al. 2009;
Hannah et al. 2004; Bond 2003; Thoms and Parsons 2002). These claims have been noted
for coastal research (Merkx and Van den Besselaar 2008) as well as for river research (Van
Hemert and Van der Meulen 2011).
However, when considering water research, interdisciplinary integration is still rela-
tively uncommon (Hillman 2009). This has been attributed to the ‘‘turbulent’’ boundaries
among different disciplines, a qualification that refers to mutual misunderstandings
between disciplinary cultures, and to a lack of effective communication (Boulton et al.
2008). Interdisciplinary efforts tend to be perceived as being more complex for participants
than traditional intra-disciplinary collaborations because participants have different para-
digms and approaches (Cullen 1990; Benda et al. 2002; Petts et al. 2006).
In this paper we take the case of river research to study the dynamics of cross-disci-
plinarity. River research is a suitable case, as especially water-related issues call for the
development of cross-disciplinary approaches to understand the systemic nature of the
riverine landscape with its ecological, social, political, economic and cultural dimensions
(Thorp et al. 2007; Lenders and Knippenberg 2005; Vugteveen et al. 2006). Following the
approach outlined in the previous section, the landscape of river research is mapped using a
combination of methods.

2
It has been argued that in the current phase of scholarly publishing, the paper, more than the journals is the
relevant unit. With direct (on line) access to articles, the journals would lose their central role in scholarly
communication. If this would be the case, one would expect that journal citation networks are becoming less
coherent over time. We tested this, and that does not seem to be the case. We will publish these results
separately.

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Firstly, we map the disciplinary landscape in which river science is embedded, based on
the citation relations between the relevant journals. We test whether river science is
developing into an interdisciplinary field, indicated by an emerging set of river research
journals with similar referencing patterns.
Secondly, the citation links (the knowledge flows) between the relevant research fields
are mapped, in order to measure the cross-disciplinary inputs for river research
Thirdly, we map the topical structure of the research front in river research at the paper
level using similarity in terms of title words and references. Clusters of papers representing
specific river research topics may be published within single disciplines, indicating a
mono-disciplinary approach, or published within different disciplines, indicating a multi-
disciplinary approach to those topics.
Fourthly, the disciplinary environment and the topical structure of river research will be
compared, and that leads to conclusions about the development of cross-disciplinarity in
river research, and about its meaning for integrated river management.

Methods and data

Document set

Science can be viewed as a communication network. Journals as well as the scientific

publications in journals allow us to map these communication systems. Journals are used
for mapping the more global scientific landscape in terms of research fields around river
research, whereas papers are used for mapping the research fronts, i.e. leading research
topics. A variety of bibliometric techniques are available for this and will be used in this
study. Fig. 1 presents a flowchart of the methodological steps, which are briefly outlined
below.
In order to map current river research we started by using river* as a search term in
order to retrieve all papers indexed in the Web of Knowledge with river* in title, keywords
or abstract (step 1 in Fig. 1).3 The search was restricted to so-called citable items: articles,
reviews, and proceedings papers (we use the commonly used term ‘papers’ to refer to all
these document types for the remainder of the article). We searched multiple years
(2007–2009) to avoid incidental citation relations. By using the simple generic search term
river* we aimed for a high recall (but consequently a lower precision) of papers.
The resulting document set (N = 31,869) was used to identify the core river science
journals by considering those journals with the highest shares of river related papers.
Table 1 shows a listing of the journals in the set that are the most strongly focusing on
rivers. Core journals are defined as (i) having more than 35 % of their total paper output in
the 2007–2009 period belonging to the river* document set and (ii) having an absolute
number of at least 100 papers in the document set. This selection was done because of
pragmatic reasons, as we want to keep the journal maps readable. So we leave out a large
number of less central and marginal journals. However, many of the journals that were

3
The use of river* may lead to a bias towards large, non-wadeable river systems and may partly exclude
literature on the wadeable parts of the river system more commonly associated with terms such as ‘streams’.
To test, deploying ‘stream*’ as search terms resulted in a set documents that hardly overlapped (some 10 %)
with the river* set. This is to a large extent because the term stream* has a much wider meaning. When
restricting the stream* papers to the relevant subject areas (e.g., Environmental Sciences, Ecology, Water
Resources, Marine Freshwater Biology, Oceanography, Biodiversity, Conservation, Physical Geography),
the overlap increases to about 50 % of the papers.

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96 79

Fig. 1 Flowchart of methodological steps in this study: a Mapping of research fields (Fig 2); b Analyzing
knowledge flows between fields (Fig 3); c Mapping of topical coverage (Fig 4)

excluded through the two criteria are still included in the analysis, as they do belong to the
citation network of the core journals (see below).

Mapping research fields

Journal citation networks are used for mapping research fields that are relevant for inter-
national river research (step 2 in Fig. 1). The approach is based on the notion that
researchers in a field share a set of research questions and methodologies and refer to a
largely overlapping core literature. The use of a common knowledge base is reflected in the
references. Consequently, journals belonging to the same research field exhibit similar

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80 Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96

Table 1 Entrance journals for the citation analysis with river research papers (2007–2009)
S. No. Source title River papers in document set

Share (%) # Papers Mass (%)

1. River research and applications 96 246 0.8

2. Ecology of freshwater fish 59 108 0.3
3. Transactions of the American fisheries society 48 206 0.6
4. Journal of the american water resources association 48 168 0.5
5. North American journal of fisheries management 44 192 0.6
6. Hydrological sciences journal 42 105 0.3
7. Geomorphology 41 379 1.2
8. Estuaries and coasts 41 119 0.4
9. Earth surface processes and landforms 41 187 0.6
10. Hydrological processes 40 411 1.3
11. Hydrology and earth system sciences 39 163 0.5
12. Water resources management 38 155 0.5
13. Freshwater biology 37 211 0.7
14. Journal of hydrology 35 474 1.5
15. Continental shelf research 35 191 0.6
For each journal the table presents (i) the share (%) of river papers across all published papers in the journal
concerned (ii) the total number of papers and (iii) the mass (%) of the journal output across the total
document set

aggregated citation patterns. The identity of the field can subsequently derived from the
journal titles in the delineated cluster, and when needed with the help of field specialists
(Van den Besselaar and Leydesdorff 1996; Van den Besselaar and Heimeriks 2001). Using
these citation-based communication patterns, we can retrieve the position of river science
within the overall scientific landscape.
The analysis is based on the journal network of the 15 journals with the most river
research papers (Table 1). We used the 2008 CD-Rom version of the Journal Citation
Reports to compile the network. The network was constructed with all journals citing or
being cited by the core 15 journals of Table 1. Since we were interested in structure and
not in incidental citations, we removed the ‘‘noise’’ by discarding those journals that
contributed \0.5 % to the citations over 2008. Many of the journals that were not selected
as core journal reappear in the analysis, as they belong to the (above threshold) citation
environment of one or more of the 15 core journals. Factor analysis is a proven approach to
find the main structure of a network (Hanneman and Riddle 2005) and for a journal
network this represents the underlying landscape of research fields. Factor analyzing the
matrix of 243 9 243 journals resulted in 23 factors,4 each representing a research field.
The analytical question we pose is whether one of the factors represents river science, and
the other factors do represent fields that are relevant for river science, or whether the core
river science journals are distributed over a variety of fields. In other words, is river science
4
Though appearing in the factor analysis as a separate field we exclude Science Magazine, Nature and the
Proceedings of the National Academies of Science from most of the further analysis of river science. These
three journals have an explicit broad multi-disciplinary scope and are heavily cited by all fields, and that puts
them together in a factor. However, they cannot be considered as representing a distinct research field.

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96 81

a (emerging) single field or is river research cross-disciplinary and distributed across a set
of distinct research fields?

Mapping knowledge flows

The next question is how the research fields that are relevant for river research are mutually
related (step 3b in Fig. 1). Do these fields depend on each other, and how strongly?
Numbers of citations between the different research fields (as represented by the factors)
were calculated using the same journal–journal citation matrix. These citation relations are
an indicator for knowledge flows and cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange, which can
be analyzed in terms of their direction, their magnitude, and network configuration. For
example, the more substantively a field is citing a range of heterogeneous other fields, the
more cross-disciplinary it is considered to be.

Mapping research topics

To map the research topics within river science we selected from the initial 3-year doc-
ument set only those documents (N = 14,803) that were published in the 243 journals
included in the factor analysis. Researchers simultaneously select (title) words to describe
their research subject and references to relate to the tradition in which they work. These
title words acquire their specific meaning within the context of the cited references. We
used word-reference similarities between papers (Van den Besselaar and Heimeriks 2006)
to map and analyze the topical structure of river research (step 4 in Fig. 1). The more
combinations of title words and cited references are shared between papers, the more
similar they are. Title words were reduced to their stem, which increased the accuracy of
the clustering.5 For such a large set of papers, factor analysis cannot be used to cluster
similar papers. Therefore we used the Saint tool (Somers et al. 2009) and a fast community
detection algorithm (Blondel et al. 2008) to reveal 1340 clusters of topical similar papers,
of which 108 have a reasonable size (defined as at least 15 papers over three years). For
research topics with a social science nature we set a minimum of 5 papers.6 In total,
slightly more than 10,000 papers (out of 14.803) are included in these 108 clusters.
In the final step the disciplinary structure and the topical structure of river science were
compared by a superposition of the topics map on the field map (step 5 in Fig. 1). This
shows the level of cross-disciplinarity of the research topics.

Results

Mapping the relevant river science fields

The 15 entrance journals have overlapping citation environments and together span a
network of 243 journals. The factor analysis of the journal citation network reveals 23

5
The nodes of the network are papers and the ties between papers are based on shared word-reference
combinations: Title word A, B to N are combined with cited reference 1, 2 to x to form A1, A2, …. Ax, B1,
B2, ….., Bx… Nx. Similarity between papers depends on the number of shared combinations.
6
For a more detailed explanation of clustering algorithms in general, see Palla et al (2005). For a com-
parative analysis of Blondel et al’s algorithm versus others’ see Lancichinetti and Fortunato (2009).

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factors, representing research fields that constitute river science as well as several related
research fields that provide knowledge input for river research (see for the result of the
factor analysis: Online Resource 1). The factors are labeled according to the focus of the
journals loading on that factor. This was done through inspecting the titles, which was then
checked by field specialists (two of the authors).
The journal network consists of fields belonging to biology, geochemistry, environ-
mental science (including environmental management), hydrology, and water resources
research. Generally, journals load on one factor and have only a very low loading on other
factors, indicating their mono-disciplinary nature. Journals that show a relatively high
loading on different factors are cross-disciplinary, filling the space between the disciplines
(Van den Besselaar and Heimeriks 2001). For example, Global Planet Change loads 0.46
on oceanography, 0.34 on general environmental ecology, 0.47 on quaternary science, and
0.46 on climatology. Also River Research and Applications shows a typical multidisci-
plinary behavior, as it loads moderately on more factors: 0.61 on limnology and 0.40 on
fisheries & fish research. On the other hand, the ecology journals and the hydrology &
water resource journals hardly load on a second factor, indicating that these research fields
have a strong disciplinary identity.
The fifteen major river science journals (Table 1) are not concentrated in one factor
but are distributed across multiple fields. Hydrology and water resources contains six of
the entrance journals, fisheries and fish research three, limnology and geomorphology
each contain two, and marine and estuarine biology and oceanography each include one.
The citation analysis thus shows that river science does not constitute a separate disci-
pline but is a multidisciplinary endeavor. Based on their share of river related papers, i.e.
the degree to which the research fields contribute to river science, the first four of these
five fields can indeed be considered as core fields for river science (Table 2). Based on
absolute numbers of papers, hydrology and water resources ranks, as expected, highest as
a major contributor to river science. Environmental pollution is also a significant field as
it has a large contribution to the document set in absolute terms. River systems may be a
major object, but are not core object of research in environmental pollution, which is
reflected in the relatively low amount of river papers compared to its total output.
Limnology and fisheries and fish research are also among the major contributors as well
as marine and estuarine ecology, the latter adding significantly to the number of river
related publications.
Figure 2 presents a visualization of the results of the factor analysis, and shows the way
the research fields are positioned in and around river science.7 The nodes represent journals
while the thickness of the links is a measure of the degree of similarity in citation behavior
between the two nodes. Research fields are represented by (factor analysis-based) groups
of journals within the larger network. The denser the network is (and the thicker the lines),
the stronger the disciplinary orientation of a research field. Figure 2 reveals which fields
are similar to each other in terms of citation patterns. These so called meta-fields are:
(i) Ecological sciences, situated on the right side of the map. Ecology is in the middle,
surrounded by different river science fields: limnology, marine and estuaries biology,
with fisheries and fish research and aquacultures clustering at the far right. Also
general environmental ecology, and evolutionary ecology are in this part of the map;

7
Please note that this is a two dimensional map of a multidimensional space. The projection influences the
distances between the fields on the map.

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96 83

Table 2 Core fields in river science 2007–2009

Rank Label Share (%) # River papers Mass (%)

1. Limnology 37.6 1,493 10.1

2. Fisheries and fish research 27.6 1,456 9.8
3. Hydrology and water resources 27.1 2,532 17.1
4. Geomorphology 26.2 850 5.7
5. Sediment geology 19.6 210 1.4
6. Geochemistry 16.4 813 5.5
7. Quaternary science 14.2 538 3.6
8. Environment pollution 13.7 1,676 11.3
9. Marine and estuarine biology 12.1 1,112 7.5
10. Environmental management 10.8 232 1.6
11. Water science and technology 10.5 550 3.7
12. Soil science and agricultural water 9.6 388 2.6
13. Geology 7.8 313 2.1
14. Oceanography 7.8 733 4.9
15. General environmental ecology 7.3 62 0.4
16. Ecology 7.0 860 5.8
17. Aquaculture 7.0 248 1.7
18. Climatology 6.8 221 1.5
19. Evolutionary ecology 5.9 193 1.3
20. Remote sensing 4.2 158 1.1
21. Microbiology 3.3 126 0.9
22. Behavioral ecology 0.7 39 0.3
Sum 14.803 100

Document set 2007 - 2009 from journals drawn in the factor analysis. For each field the share (%) and
absolute number of river papers across all published papers in the subsequent field journals is presented, as
well as the mass (%) of the field across the river science document set

(ii) Geosciences, at the left of the map, including geology, sedimentology, quaternary
sciences and climatology;
(iii) Environmental pollution and Water science and technology, in the left-bottom
corner;
(iv) Hydrology and water resources, center bottom the map. The map shows that this field
has a strong own citation identity; separated from the other fields and having a dense
network structure.

Several other fields that are relevant for river science can be found on the map. Geo-
chemistry is in the center of the map, between geosciences and hydrology. At the edges we
find Microbiology, and Behavioral ecology. In the right top, close to the Geosciences, we
find Remote sensing. Finally, Environmental management is in the lower middle of the
map.
Concluding, river science has not developed into an early or mature interdisciplinary
field, but consists of a few fields in which river research has an important position. River
research and main journals publishing about it are distributed across hydrology (six
journals), the various ecology fields (seven journals), and geosciences (two journals).

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84 Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96

Fig. 2 River science 2008 journal network (The nodes represent journals. Dense areas and thick links
between nodes represent high similarity in citing behavior)

Mapping of knowledge flows between the fields

The various research fields have mutual citation relations whereby the more field A cites
field B, C, D etc., the more it depends on these other research fields. The observed meta-
fields that compose river science present themselves clearly when considering the
knowledge flows (citation relations) between the fields. Figure 3 presents a visual repre-
sentation of these relations, and Online Resource 2 supplies the underlying data.
The eco-sciences meta-field includes ecology and more specialized fields such as human
environmental ecology, ecological genetics, evolutionary- and behavioral ecology. Envi-
ronmental management has the strongest citing relations with ecology. The meta-field
further includes aquatic ecology and biology fields such as limnology and marine and
estuarine biology, and fisheries and fish research and aquaculture. Within the eco-sciences
the field of ecology is central and presents a so-called reference field for other eco-fields as
it is being cited substantively, as well being cited by other fields throughout the whole
network. Furthermore there is an environmental pollution and water science and tech-
nology grouping consisting of hydrology and soil science and agricultural water research,
and also a geoscience meta-field including a subgrouping of oceanography and climatol-
ogy. The geoscience meta-field is quite separate from the eco-science meta-field in which
oceanography and geology present reference fields. Finally, we found hydrology and soil
water as a fourth meta-field.

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96 85

Fig. 3 Knowledge flows between research fields (The nodes represent the fields. The dashed circles
indicate meta-fields. Thickness of the arrowhead and distance between fields express the strength of the
flows. The closer together, the stronger the mutual knowledge flows. The light gray circles indicate the four
fields that include the core of river science. The dark grey circle in the center of the map indicates Science
Magazine, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. As expected, these journals
are cited by (almost) all other fields, and therefore get a position in the center of the map. The second dark
circle is the ecology field, a center field in the eco-sciences.)

One may classify a field as cross-disciplinary when it is substantively citing a range of

other fields belonging to different meta-fields. From inspecting the knowledge flows across
these meta-fields it appears however that the citation relations within the four meta-fields
are rather tight, whereas the cross-disciplinary exchange between the four meta-fields is
much more limited. For example the environmental pollution and water science & tech-
nology meta-field does show citation relations to the eco- and geosciences meta-fields but
to a very limited extent.
We have identified river science as a multidisciplinary activity within hydrology &
water resources, limnology, fisheries and fish research and geomorphology. When we
consider these core fields (light grey circles in Fig. 3), hydrology and water resources
presents a distinct research field that is mainly self-citing (60 %) and has links to both the
environmental pollution meta-field as well as the meta-field of geosciences. The most
substantial mutual citing relation is shown with soil science and agricultural water. The
citation relations with the other three mentioned core river science fields are small or
absent. Limnology and fisheries and fish research belong to the same grouping—but hardly
cite hydrology and water resources and geomorphology. Finally, geomorphology heavily
cites hydrology and water resources (and not the other way around) but does not cite
fisheries and fish research and limnology (see Online Resource 2 for further details). In
other words, the different river research fields are not strongly connected in terms of
knowledge exchange.

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 86
Table 3 Major river science research topics having at least 50 papers. Per topic the contributions (%) of metafields and single fields to the topical paper set (third column) is
presented
Nr. Topics Nr. of Meta-fielda (%) Most contributing Share All contributing

123
papers field (%) fieldsb
Ecol Geoscience Hydr WST
Science & &
Soil Poll

1 Fish assemblages-habitat effects 1436 83 3 6 8 Limnology 37.7 5; 7; 9; 13; 14; 15

2 Hydrol modeling-climate change 1349 5 21 67 7 Hydrology & water res 61.8 3; 13; 21
3 River flow-fish and vegetation effects 714 64 15 16 5 Limnology 29.6 5; 9; 11; 13; 14
4 Salmon trout-population genetics 474 98 1 0 1 Fisheries and fish res 31.9 1; 5; 8; 9; 14; 15
5 Holocene river evolution 464 5 91 5 0 Quaternary science 43.3 4; 11; 18; 20
6 River sediments 318 14 70 11 5 Oceanography 24.8 4; 11; 13; 15; 17; 18; 20
7 Heavy metal pollution 263 6 28 9 57 Env pollution 51.7 7; 10; 21
8 Dissolved organic carbon 246 29 29 15 27 Env pollution 20.7 7; 10; 13; 14; 15; 17; 22
9 Estuarine phytoplankton-nutrient dynamics 227 71 14 2 14 Mar and est biol 49.3 7; 14; 15; 17
10 River basin weathering 200 3 77 14 7 Geochemistry 47.5 4; 7; 10; 13; 17
11 River sediments–organic matter 186 19 69 2 9 Geochemistry 32.3 7; 10; 15; 17
12 Groundwater-surface water interactions 186 20 9 64 7 Hydrology and water res 61.3 7; 13; 14
13 River bed–transport 168 4 57 38 2 Geomorphology 44.6 11; 13; 20
14 Mercury contamination 166 16 17 3 64 Env pollution 62.0 7; 10
15 estuarine plume modeling 152 23 67 7 4 Oceanography 58.6 13; 15; 17
16 Flow modeling-artificial neural network 148 7 4 80 8 Hydrology and water res 78.4 13
17 Nitrogen phosphorus effects 142 40 19 33 8 Soil science 16.9 5; 7; 10; 13; 14; 15; 16; 21
18 Polycyclic aromatics and hydrocarbons distr. 127 9 8 3 80 Env pollution 74.8 7; 15; 22
19 Food web-trophic levels isotopes 105 87 4 0 10 Mar and est biol 45.7 5; 7; 9; 14; 15
20 Nutrients-agricultural loading 105 16 12 47 25 Soil science 23.8 7; 10; 13; 14; 17; 21; 22
21 Groundwater–isotopes 100 7 49 42 2 Hydrology and water res 42.0 10; 13; 18
Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96
 Table 3 continued

Nr. Topics Nr. of Meta-fielda (%) Most contributing Share All contributing
papers field (%) fieldsb
Ecol Geoscience Hydr WST
Science & &
Soil Poll

22 Salmon trout–habitat 96 97 2 0 1 Fisheries and fish res 59.4 5; 9; 14

23 Wastewater treatment-pharm occurrence 81 2 0 5 93 Env pollution 65.4 7; 22
24 Sturgeon, green-habitat use 79 97 0 0 3 Fisheries and fish res 54.4 1; 9
Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96

25 Eel migration 76 97 1 0 1 Fisheries and fish res 55.3 9; 14; 15

26 Water quality assessment–pollution 75 4 5 25 65 Env pollution 44.0 7; 10; 13; 22
27 Salmon trout, atlantic-migration & survival 74 97 0 0 3 Fisheries and fish res 64.9 1; 9; 14; 15
28 River sediments–transport 72 6 33 51 10 Hydrology and water res 43.1 7; 11; 13; 21
29 Salmon, pacific-migration & spawning 70 97 1 1 0 Fisheries and fish res 45.7 5; 6; 8; 9
30 Mekong delta-arsenic pollution 65 0 62 14 25 Geochemistry 56.9 7; 10; 13
31 Wastewater treatment–hormones 58 3 0 3 93 Env pollution 81.0 7; 22
32 River-estuary interaction-tidal circulation 56 30 59 2 9 Marine and estuarine biology 50.0 13; 15; 17
33 Carbon fluxes 56 50 41 7 2 Oceanography 35.7 7; 10; 15; 17
34 Fish otolith chemical composition 54 96 2 0 2 Fisheries and fish res 55.6 9; 15
35 Integrated water management-social learning 53 25 0 58 17 Hydrology and water res 56.6 6; 13; 22
36 Leaf-litter decomposition 53 91 0 0 9 Limnology 66.0 5; 7; 14; 15; 16
37 Polychlorinated and brominated substance distr. 50 0 0 2 98 Env pollution 98.0 7
38 Pesticides distribution 50 4 0 6 90 Env pollution 84.0 7; 21; 22
a
Meta-field definition follows from identified factors (Fig. 2) and knowledge flows (Fig. 3). The meta-field with the highest share is shown in bold
b
Fields contributing more than 5 % to the topic paper set are presented as well as the most contributing field and its respective share. Identification of contributing fields, i.e.
research field representation, is based on the journal affiliations of topic papers and their respective identified factorial research fields. 1 Aquaculture, 2 behavioral ecology, 3
climatology, 4 geology, 5 ecology, 6 environmental management, 7 environmental pollution, 8 evolutionary ecology, 9 fisheries and fish research, 10 geochemistry, 11
geomorphology, 12 general environmental ecology, 13 hydrology and water research, 14 limnology, 15 marine and estuarine biology, 16 microbiology, 17 oceanography, 18
quaternary science, 19 remote sensing, 20 sediment geology, 21 soil science, 22 water science and technology
87

123
 88

Table 4 Major social issues research topics having at least 5 papers. Per topic the contributions (%) of metafields and single fields to the topical paper set (third column) is
presented

123
Nr. Topic Nr. of Meta-fielda (%) Most Share All contributing
papers contributing field (%) fieldsb
Ecol Geoscience Hydr & WST &
Science Soil Poll

1 Integrated water management-social learning 53 25 0 58 17 Hydrol and water res 57 6; 7; 13; 21; 22
2 Integrated water management–allocation 24 4 0 88 8 Hydrol and water res 83 6; 13; 21; 22
3 Conservation planning 19 84 0 5 11 Env mana 58 5; 6; 14; 21; 22
4 Integrated water management–governance 14 0 0 86 14 Hydrol and water res 86 13; 22
5 Coping with floods 10 10 70 10 10 Geomorph 70 6; 11; 13; 22
6 Water sharing-disputes and cooperation 10 0 0 100 0 Hydrol and water res 100 13
7 Water resources–economics 8 25 0 50 25 Hydrol and water res 50 5; 13; 22
8 Virtual water trade 7 0 0 71 29 Hydrol and water res 71 13; 22
9 Stakeholder water demands 7 14 0 29 57 Water sci tech 57 13; 14; 22
10 Integrated urban management: systems approach 7 0 14 29 57 Water sci tech 57 3; 13; 22
11 Planning under uncertainty 7 0 0 86 14 Hydrol and water res 71 13; 21; 22
12 Balancing water needs 7 14 14 57 14 Hydrol and water res 57 10; 12; 13; 22
13 EU water framework directive 6 17 33 17 33 Geochem 33 6; 7; 10; 13; 22
14 Trading discharge permits 6 17 0 50 33 Hydrol and water res 50 6; 7; 13; 22
15 Water markets 6 0 0 100 0 Hydrol and water res 83 13; 21
16 Recreation management 5 80 0 0 20 Env mana 40 1; 6; 9; 22
17 Flood vulnerability: informing policy 5 0 20 20 60 Water sci tech 60 3; 13; 22
a
Meta-field definition follows from identified factors (Fig. 2) and knowledge flows (Fig. 3). The meta-field with the highest share is shown in bold. Social topics were
identified based on ‘‘socially-relevant’’ title words
b
See legend of Table 3
Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96
Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96 89

Mapping of river research topics

So far we mapped river science on a high level of aggregation: as a network of research

fields, based on the relevant journals. Using the published papers as unit for mapping we
now proceed by producing a more detailed map of river research. Clustering papers
through title word-cited reference similarity we derived the main research topics in river
science over the last few years, i.e. the research front. Table 3 gives an overview of the 38
largest topics out of 108 main research topics we identified in the document set.
The research topics cover fish, climate, river evolution and pollution issues. Specifi-
cally, the distribution and diversity of fish assemblages in relation to habitat changes
presents a large topic in the set, followed by hydrological modeling in the context of
climate change. Table 4 also shows that many major topics in river science are focusing on
different forms of environmental pollution. Furthermore, topics focuses on fish migration,
sediments multiple topics address systemic relations, specifically ecological and geomor-
phological cycles as well as hydrological interactions and dynamics.
Table 3 shows which research fields contribute to the various topics. It can be seen that
most of the topics are the research domain of multiple fields indicating CDR endeavors.
Some topics are explicitly the object of study for a single field, for example in environ-
mental pollution (e.g. Nos. 7, 14), hydrology and water resources (e.g. Nos. 2, 12) and
fisheries and fish research (e.g. Nos. 22, 24). Above, we observed that fields like hydrology
and water resources and environmental pollution show high self-citing behavior suggesting
mono-disciplinarity. But also the topics that have cross-disciplinary orientation remain
within a single meta-field. These findings suggest that cross-disciplinary interaction across
broader scientific meta-fields is limited. This is in line with the analysis of knowledge flows
presented above.
Despite the discussions on the relevance of social research (such as planning, man-
agement, economics) for river research and management, the fields map (Fig. 2) only
included one such field: environmental management. The topics list (Table 3) does not
show any social science topics. By investigating the presence and nature of ‘societal’
research topics in river scientific output in detail, more insight is gained in the position of
social science within river research. Using a title word search,8 a total of 38 different topics
were identified of which Table 4 shows the major ones. These topics relate to integrated
water management, planning, system approaches, water sharing & trade, and user/stake-
holder perspectives. The focus is on (integrated) water management and related topics,
with clear policy relevance. Over half of the social topics are related to the field of
hydrology and water resources and are published in the more general water resource
(management) oriented journals such as Water Resources Management and Water Policy.
Other societal topics are within environmental management and in water science and
technology. Interestingly, although societal issues are being discussed in the river research
literature, there is no significant reference to social science literature as no factor with
social science journals was found.
Tables 3 and 4 show that some topics predominantly belong to a single research field
whereas most topics are researched by a variety of fields. Differences and similarities in
topical relations of research fields are further visualized in Fig. 4 representing a topics map

8
We used an automated search on the following search terms and derivatives (based on an inspection of the
title words frequency distribution): agencies, cost, decision, development, economic, institution, learning,
management, participant, place, planning, policy, public, social, socio, stakeholder, strategy, sustainability,
user. The remaining topics were manually and visually checked.

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90 Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96

based on similarities in terms of word-reference combinations. This means that papers of

similar topical scope are clustered. Related topics are close to each other, whereas unre-
lated topics are farther apart. A so-called ‘spring model’ algorithm fitted all articles into a
2D visualization, using the BibTechMon visualization tool (Kopcsa and Schiebel 1998).
On this topics map a field map was superimposed. For clarity reasons we partitioned the
mapping and produced separate maps for each research field. For each field (= a set of
journals) all papers belonging to the field are colored. This way of presenting and visu-
alizing allows for comparisons between fields and it reveals that the topical scopes of
research fields differ in range and structure. In some field maps, papers are concentrated
indicating a more homogeneous topical structure of the field. This is true for smaller fields
like evolutionary ecology and climatology. Other fields show a more heterogeneous topical
structure like ecology and environmental pollution. Multi-disciplinary topics (Table 3) are
indicated where colored areas in field maps show overlap. For example limnology and
marine & estuaries biology partly cover the same topics.
Overviewing the complete field-configuration of the topics mapping, the previously
observed division in meta-fields is recognizable again; the upper half of the mapping
presents the ecological sciences with aquatic ecological science positioned at the edge and
general ecology lying more to the center. Hydrology and water resources is concentrated at
center-bottom and the geosciences are found at the lower left. Environmental pollution is
more spread out across the ecological sciences region. Core fields like limnology and
fisheries and fish research cover a large part of the topics map of river science, along with
marine and estuarine biology. Ecology itself is more heterogeneous and spread out, indi-
cating a wide topical scope. Water science and technology and soil science are hetero-
geneous fields as well. Soil science and hydrology and water resources have shared topics.
The link between these fields is also apparent from their mutual citation streams (Fig. 3).
The core field hydrology & water resources field covers a broad topical scope of research
issues. Part of this field shows shared topical interest with ecology and environmental
management, and with geomorphology. This latter field overlaps with ecology as well.
Furthermore, Fig. 4 makes clear that the fields of oceanography and geochemistry have
considerable topical overlap. This concerns fluxes and loading of organic carbon and
nutrients from river basins into oceanic systems as can be derived from the main topics in
which both fields are involved (see also Table 4). Finally, the societal topics are presented
in a separate visualization and it can be seen that they cluster quite strongly in a specific
part of the hydrology and water research meta-field.

Discussion and conclusions

In this study the scholarly output of river research was analyzed using bibliometric tech-
niques with the aim to investigate claims and calls for CDR endeavors (Palmer and
Bernhardt 2006; McCulloch 2007). Such a quantitative evaluation of river research seems
timely, given the growing body of literature expressing the need for research crossing
traditional academic boundaries in support of understanding and managing the social-
ecological complexity of rivers (Hillman et al. 2008; Vugteveen et al. 2006; Brierley and
Fryirs 2008; Surridge and Harris 2007).
The availability of extensive publication databases makes river science amenable to
bibliometric indicators, and enables to investigate its dynamics. That leads to a study based
only on research output published in peer reviewed scientific journals. Differences exist in
publication traditions between scientific disciplines. In the social sciences and humanities,

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96 91

Fig. 4 Topical scope of all river research fields (including societal issues). (Nodes in the figures represent
papers whereby the relations between articles are based on similarity in terms of word-reference
combinations. The mapping has been partitioned and colored in separate ‘layers’ according to the research
field affiliation of the individual papers.)

also books provide an important publication format whereas technical fields intensively use
conference proceedings. In water related research this is about 25 % (Van den Besselaar
and Horlings 2010), which means that journals are the dominant form of communicating
research in river science. Therefore, our analysis results in a valid representation of the
field. However, including other publication types such as reports may add the applied

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92 Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96

(transdisciplinary) part of river science in a more detailed way. This we may address in a
next study. We will now first discuss the findings about cross-disciplinarity in river science,
and then draw conclusions about our approach and method to study cross-disciplinarity.
(i) We started our study mapping river research within the disciplinary landscape and
found that river science has not (yet) emerged as an interdisciplinary research field but is
performed in four core disciplinary fields: limnology, fisheries and fish research, hydrology
and water resources, and geomorphology. Overall this structure confirms what other
authors identified as the main components of a scientific framework for studying the
biophysical functioning of rivers, i.e. river ecology, hydrology and fluvial geomorphology
(Poole 2002; Dollar et al. 2007; Thoms and Parsons 2002; Mika et al. 2008). As discussed
above, cross-disciplinarity is related to the evolution of the disciplinary landscape.
Therefore we also made a map of river science in 1998. We factor-analyzed the 1998
journal citation network in a similar way as presented for 2008. We observed growth of the
relevant fields in terms of the number of journals, but overall there appear to be no
meaningful changes between 1998 and 2008 with respect to the position of river research
in the scientific landscape.
Closer examination of disciplinary orientations and cross-disciplinary patterns showed a
division of river science in distinct clusters of fields, i.e. meta-fields broadly covering
biological and ecological sciences, environmental sciences, the geo- and geochemical
sciences and the hydrological sciences (Fig. 1; Table 3). The knowledge flows were shown
to be much stronger within than between these meta-fields, although even within the meta-
fields, cross-field citations are relatively scarce. This suggests that traditional disciplinary
divisions between the biological, environmental and physical dimensions of river system
research are still prominent.
Ecology was identified as a primary research field in the river science citation network
and is found to be the most cited across all fields (Table 4). This suggests that the field of
ecology has become an authoritative knowledge reference underlying river research. This
finding fits with an observed shift in river (management) approaches away from an
engineering-based to an ecosystem-based water management paradigm (Brierley and
Fryirs 2008), and is also supported by the fact that hydraulic engineering did not show up
as a separate field in our mapping. Based on a quick scan, the citation environment of
hydraulic engineering journals constitutes a network adjacent to what defines river science
in this paper.
Despite calls for cross-disciplinary fields such as eco-geomorphology, hydroecology or
hydromorphology (Vaughan et al. 2009; Hannah et al. 2004; Thoms and Parsons 2002) the
map of river science does not show the arrival of these fields. Nor do we observe a
connection with relevant social science research.
These findings are in line with observations by Porter and Rafols (2009) who examined
the degree of interdisciplinarity in mathematics, physics, biology, engineering, medicine
and neurosciences. They concluded that science is becoming more interdisciplinary, but in
small steps—drawing mainly from direct neighboring fields and only modestly increasing
the connections to distant cognitive areas, like social scientific fields in the case of river
science.
(ii) In the next step research topics were analyzed in order to provide deeper under-
standing of the cross-disciplinary nature of river research fronts. This demonstrated that
although river science operates in a ‘traditional’ disciplinary mode as indicated by the field
mapping, various research topics represent a combined contribution of disciplinary
research, which implies multi-disciplinary research efforts at the operational research level
(Tress et al. 2005). Major topics address the interface of hydrology and water resources,

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Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96 93

geomorphology and ecology (Poole 2002; Dollar et al. 2007; Thoms and Parsons 2002)
and concern the study of systemic cycles, interactions and dynamics at the interface of
these disciplines (see Table 5).
The complex societal context of riverine management issues not only demands
understanding from the natural sciences but also from the social sciences including psy-
chology, sociology, geography, political science, economics and policy studies (Vugteveen
et al. 2006; Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007; Hillman 2009; Lenders and Knippenberg 2005; Bri-
erley and Fryirs 2008; Surridge and Harris 2007). Thorp et al. (2007) in their presentation
of the International Society for River Science (ISRS) - mention social science, economics,
management and policy as relevant to river science next to hydrology and water resources,
geomorphology, ecology and chemistry. We analyzed whether current multidisciplinary
river research includes research beyond natural science. We did find planning and man-
agement issues to be part of river science research, evidenced by the presence of an
environmental management field, and by several management related research topics
mainly within the hydrology and water resources field (Table 5). The cross-disciplinary
orientation of this latter field can be attributed mainly to the water resource journals, which
have a broader scope than the hydrology research journals, and which consider water
resources in their societal context. However, river research literature does hardly cite social
science literature, suggesting that one is reinventing the wheel instead of using what is
available. This is in line with Botey et al. (2012), who found that studies related to
ecosystem management are dominated by the philosophical, ontological, and epistemo-
logical preferences of natural science.
(iii) Our analysis did not confirm that research on river issues in their societal context
produces the type of knowledge referred to by Hillman (2009) as phronesis; i.e. contextual
and place-dependent knowledge derived from practical experience and values at the local
level and applied in a particular socio-political setting. This type of transdisciplinary
knowledge is considered necessary to advance river management next to techne or applied
‘‘know-how’’, as in art, craft or technology and episteme or ‘‘know-why’’, scientific
knowledge that is universally applicable. Our results thus support Hillman’s observation
that claims for a paradigm shift based on the full inclusion of the three mentioned
knowledge types in river management must be treated with considerable caution (Hillman
2009). Qualitative approaches to the development of river science (Van Hemert 2008; Van
Hemert and Van der Meulen 2011), based on interviews and document analysis, often
sketch a picture where wishes and aims dominate, and not so much the de facto trends in a
research field. The advantage of the quantitative approach in this study is to deliver the
latter.
(iv) The local and practical (transdisciplinary) integration of river science in everyday
engineering and social interventions may not proceed through paper-based communication
of research results, as we noted earlier. Other forms of interaction may be relevant here as
well, such as co-researching and collaboration between researchers and river professionals
and policy makers. Future research on these collaborative relations may reveal this in more
detail.
(v) Finally, we introduced an approach to cross-disciplinarity based on a two level
analysis of disciplinary change and research front dynamics. The application of the
approach on the river research case suggests its usefulness. At the level of the research
front, most topics combine contributions from multiple research fields. This signals
emerging multi-disciplinary research activities in river science. By combining this with an
analysis of the topological structure of the disciplinary environment of river research, it
becomes clear that the multidisciplinary research feeds back into the constituent individual

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94 Scientometrics (2014) 100:73–96

disciplines, without any (early) signs interdisciplinary integration at the field research
level. No new clustered research activities outside the boundaries of the established dis-
ciplines are visible yet. Actually, despite all the multidisciplinary activities within river
research, the 2008 map suggests a firm stability of the disciplinary landscape. For the time
being, claims about interdisciplinary river science remain presumptions.

Acknowledgments This study has been partly financed by the Interdepartmental Institute Science and
Society of the Radboud University Nijmegen (grant W&S 2004-04), and by the Kennis voor Klimaat
(Knowledge for Climate) program. Thanks to Mieke van Hemert for providing input when discussing the set
up of the project, to André Somers for assistance with the SAINT Toolbox, to Jan Hendriks, Rob Leuven
and two anonymous reviewers for providing valuable comments on earlier drafts.

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